When I peered from the balcony overlooking the left point of Cardon Resort and beheld the biggest waves I’ve witnessed since standing on the beach at the Pipe Masters contest in 2012 (I still have Joel Parkinson’s rashguard from his winning heat — one of the best days of my life), my initial thought was excitement, which quickly changed to almost peeing myself after my brain started functioning, remembering I had to surf.
The previous day I knew the swell was building, and in the darkness of night the sound of crashing waves shook me violently from my surf slumber, but when I finally got up to take a look, the titanic lines were more than twice as big as the 5-7 foot Surfline forecast.
As supervisor Jeff and the gang of fireman guests bounced around at first light frantically in search of wax, boardies, leashes, and their guns — longer boards for handling double overhead plus waves — I hung back and made “friends” with Larry the Lizard and skipped around the beautiful resort, briefly pausing to look up to see Jeff and the guys dropping down endless faces, snapping back up to set their lines high, pointing north and pumping hastily away from the 15 foot columns of foam speeding towards their heels.
Thankfully for me and my longboard, the inside at Cardon was producing a playful section to mess around on, and while I witnessed some of the gnarliest wipeouts and the longest waves I’ve seen ridden (the section that usually is hard to beat was holding up and making for a maybe 400 yard ride) I got pounded at “Cams Corner” and managed to push down into few head high waves, and turned the left of Cardon into my own personal right pointbreak. With the tide, direction, and magnitude of the swell, there was a wave swinging in every five minutes or so that broke right — you just had to get under, over, or through about 40 whitewater walls to wait to get it. But when it came, I was happily carving, and surprisingly noseriding, kicking out before I knew I would be over the reef, not particularly wanting to write about another injury or more cut up feet.
One by one the firemen exited the break — the resort operating on a weekly basis, from Saturday to Saturday, meant their week was up, and with a somber countenance they packed their sticks, clothes, and it might have been the first time I had seen all of them in anything other than boardshorts since I arrived last Monday. Twelve out of the 18 signed up on the priority sheet for the same week next year, and filed into the 12 o’clock transport to the airport, already devising plans for their next Cardon getaway.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBWUWjrxbYE
The resort was empty save the Cardon employees, who were hard at work getting things ready for the next group due around 8 p.m. I had nothing to do and no one to bother, so feeling like a kid in an abandoned and perfectly functioning theme park, I took it upon myself to bounce back and forth from making margaritas, charging back alone into the surf for more inside thrash sessions, almost getting my finger bit off by my only friend Larry, and running a few miles up and down the beach restlessly. The staff shook their heads as I bounced back and forth from one station to the next.
